Shea kindly sent me this video of a couple young Dutch men who volunteered to have electrodes put on their abdomen to simulate the increasingly painful contractions of labour.
It’s not in English but I’d say pain is a pretty universal language – although if I’m being a smart-ass, I’d also wonder if they were able to simulate an epidural!)
A discussion on Reddit about who uses dust jacket flaps as bookmarks leads to all kinds of other related anecdotes…
English Prof here:
Want a great way to boost reading comprehension?
Don’t use bookmarks!
It’s weird and counter-intuitive, but what this does is force you to go back and quickly skim over what you read and what you haven’t, steps that really boost reading comprehension.
Try it out. It takes a bit of practice to “remember” where you left off, but after a very short period, you should be able to find your spot in less than half a minute.
And this…
Wait until our kids start saying “I thought bookmark was just the name they gave that button on my e-reader”
Or these bookmarks which don’t just mark your page but the line you left off on…
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bookmark-last-line-multi-set-of-2-lastline-bookmark-inc/1004765757
Using the original thread for inspiration, here’s my go to items I use as bookmarks…
And full confession – I don’t know if I’ve ever regularly used a bookmark that I purchased or which was purchased for me as a gift. As a matter of fact, I just brought three of these kind to put out on the “Table o’ Free” we have in our staff room at the library. They were gone within twenty minutes.
In 2009, I did a series of ten posts listing the reasons I was supporting Ryan Meili for the Leader of the Sask NDP.
I’m pretty sure I could come up with ten different and equally viable reasons this time around. In fact, depending on how much time I have, I may very well do that in the coming weeks.
But for now, just for the record and to get them all in one place, here’s the list I came up with back then (sorry for the broken internal links in so many of these posts. I’m still cleaning up from the blog merge)…
10. He’s soft-spoken
9. He’s got very little baggage
8. He’s run a positive campaign
7. He’s my age
6. His innovative use of technology
5. He gets things done
4. His openness
3. His commitment to Saskatchewan
2. He dreams big
1. His potential as a transformative leader for the province
Haven’t done one of these “5 Quick Hits” posts in awhile…
Hockey
I didn’t miss the NHL when it was locked out but I can honestly say that today was the first day I felt like coming home from work, popping open a beer and settling in to watch a game. Luckily that will be possible by the end of this week!
Libraryland
Had to give a presentation about RPL’s Outreach Unit to the Regina Christian Seniors Women’s Group. Was very happy to not burst into flames walking into the room so anything that came after that was a bonus! I was also literally the only man in the room so also enjoyed the keynote speaker who continually made reference to “Ladies…and Jason” rather than “Ladies and gentlemen” as she spoke. It was also a fun time simply from the perspective that it’s always cool to go into a place and a world that you otherwise never would – to see this group of mostly senior, religious ladies and to hear about what they’re thinking and concerned with and interested in was fascinating. Also once again to have it reinforced how great it is to work in the public library as literally every single person I spoke to before or after my presentation had a story about how the library or books have impacted their life – the woman whose family used to get a year’s worth of library books from RPL (I think this was actually a service of the Provincial Library back in the day before many rural areas didn’t have easy access to books) to the woman who worked in her school library but wasn’t sure if she should list “God” as the author of the Bible. (“As long as you file it under Fiction, I don’t think it matters!” I told her. Just kidding!)
Pace Cuteness
How about this clip I re-discovered reviewing photos and videos from our Hawaii trip…
Politics
I may say more about some or all of these topics at a later date but just gotta say Ryan Meili’s having a really good run right now – just set a record for fundraising in a single month of *any* Sask NDP Leadership candidate (in December which I feared would be our softest month!), first-place in the initial candidate rankings by the Accidental Jurist, received some complimentary coverage on CBC’s Morning Edition about Team Meili’s social media innovation including our #twibeard campaign and even conservative talk show host John Gormley admits he “has a lot of time for [Ryan Meili]” after their recent interview. There was also an article in the Moose Jaw Express with an awesome quote from former Agriculture and Transportation Minister (and Indian Head United Church Minister – hmm, maybe I should go to church?) Mark Wartman: “We have a great field of contenders, but Meili is exceptional.”.
Random Link(s) Somehow Relating to Popular Social Media Site
How social media transformed a Canadian city.
I don’t know if Ryan Meili will win the Saskatchewan NDP leadership race. But as one of his supporters told me recently, we’re not not just leading in fundraising, we’re leading in “fun” raising and “friend” raising.
And win or lose, that’s the kind of campaign I’m proud to be a part of and the kind of province I want to live in!
There are two kinds of Internet celebrities – those who get famous for something they did online (anyone from Justin Bieber to Psy to Paris Hilton and so on.)
Then there are Internet celebrities who are famous for what they’ve *continually* do online (anyone from Cory Doctorow to Lawrence Lessig to Julian Assange and so on.)
Among that latter group, there are Internet celebrities whose influence you don’t realise until they’re gone. Aaron Swartz is one such person. I’d probably read his name before (he helped create RSS, the Open Library, and was also a co-founder of Reddit after all) but he wasn’t someone who had the same name recognition to me that other “Internet rock stars” do.
But his recent suicide, mixed with an awareness of all he’d accomplished in his 26-short years on this planet, makes the loss especially poignant, moreso due to the speculation that his suicide was triggered by persecution by the US Government for his open access advocacy.
Tributes have poured in from fellow open access advocates and even more traditional writers/publishers/journalists who Swartz managed to convince that perhaps a control-focused, copyright-heavy approach wasn’t actually in the best interest of anyone, even the authors/publishers/journalists (and governments/corporations/institutions) in question. Others are looking at the larger abuse of power that led to this unfortunate end.
The irony is that his death may make him a political martyr for the causes of information freedom in the eyes of a whole generation of online denizens.
…otherwise the following could be quite embarrASSing! 😉
Since I chose swimming with turtles on Anini Beach on the north shore of Kauai as the highlight of 2012 for me (see question #40), I thought I’d mark the one year anniversary of our departure on that trip with a video of that memorable moment…
…is a word with a homograph (a word of the same spelling) that is also an antonym (a word with the opposite meaning).
The more you know!
Very interesting behind-the-scenes look at how Obama’s Reddit AMA was proposed, how it happened and how it impacted his campaign.
This was a day of political-campaign and Internet firsts, the sitting president subjecting himself to a free- for-all question-and-answer session with a hardcore community of pot-smoking freedom junkies who hated drones and loved porn and had a keen interest in politics and the future. It was chaotically democratic, and something of a gamble. Reddit had its baggage, issues, controversies, etc.; it wouldn’t generally pass a campaign or White House vetting. There’s some fucked up shit there, creep shots, racist rants, borderline teen porn, for example—and other good shit, too, for the most part, but the kind of material that could become fodder for critics looking to attack Obama.
